Dr Julie McAuley

Senior Research Officer, Department of Microbiology and Immunology

I am a medical research scientist. I ask important questions relating to influenza infections, design experiments and find out things that have never been know before about the disease it causes.

There are always new influenza viruses trying to infect the human population that aren’t always covered by the vaccine. I’m trying to find ways we can easily screen for the new viruses and predict how sick they can make us, before they infect us. That way we can be better prepared to treat people who become sick from these viruses.

One person from history I would love to meet is Rosalind Franklin, who took photos of DNA before Watson and Crick published anything about it. How did she know what she had photographed was going to be the cornerstone of understanding everything about what makes living organisms tick?

Find out more about the Skype a (Biomedical) Scientist program and participating researchers here.